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The end of the manual transmission is near?

popularmechanics.com

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Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#801

Post by CamperBob2 »

guga42k wrote: post #166
PheonixPharts wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's in your budget I highly recommend test driving the Porsche Macan. It has a screen but as far as I can tell it's not required for anything that doesn't implicitly require a screen (i.e. GPS). Overall the car is amazingly well designed. The tactile experience is there, you can feel your way around everything without moving your eyes from the road/immediate dash area. It still has an analog clock. I also feel li…

Right. This amazing car refuses to open its trunk from inside when being in park mode and engine switched off when you are not in Home Screen on central panel. Another interesting issue is compatibility porsche id and apple car play. it seems the car play kicks out porsche id 3 times out of 4 given that you use your iphone as identification means.

Right. This amazing car refuses to open its trunk from inside when being in park mode and engine switched off when you are not in Home Screen on central panel.

Huh? What generation is this? I use that button all the time in my 95B.2 while CarPlay is up. Last time was a couple of days ago, hauling a load of pavers home from Lowe's.

Another interesting issue is compatibility porsche id and apple car play. it seems the car play kicks out porsche id 3 times out of 4 given that you use your iphone as identification means.

Yeah, the Porsche ID thing is a tire fire. It almost always fails to log in immediately after startup, showing an error message before it even bothers to attempt reconnection. Then, if you leave it alone, it reconnects on its own and usually works as expected. About 5%-10% of the time it won't log in successfully until the next drive cycle.

Porsche should update their famous "There's a reason why most rocket scientists are German" ad to include "... and why most software developers are American." (I'm sure the PCM OEM is American, but it would be a well-deserved hot take.)

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#802

Post by pmalynin »

johnwalkr wrote: post #598
pmalynin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shiet, I used to drive a manual 5L Mustang in the depth of the Edmonton winter. There was definitely one hill going into the city where if the traffic stopped (due to there being a pedestrian crossing right at the top for some reason) it was definitely time to start praying to the old gods and the new. One time, after a particularly snowy night I drove into downtown and after making a right turn the car had its belly…

Please don’t take this as an insult but I’m originally from Edmonton and complaining pedestrians as if pedestrians and not traffic is what causes traffic, as you drive your 5.0 into Edmonton from presumably the suburbs, is the most Edmontonian thing I’ve heard in a while. And then you one-upped yourself because bragging about driving in the snow is the third most popular past-time in Edmonton (after making fun of Tor…

My particular complaint about that hill and the pedestrian crossing is that it’s right at the edge, where as moving it back a couple of feet would give cars from down below a buffer. Oh and the real cause of traffic on that hill was the endless construction. But I’m sure you know that trope too lol

But anyway, I’m now in the Bay Area and my third most popular past time now is making fun of people suddenly and violently forgetting how to drive the moment there is a single drop of water falling from the sky.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#803

Post by hinkley »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #503
hinkley wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great number of the cool designs from the 50's and 60's are illegal because the front of the car eats people. Swallows them, chews them up, and spits them out. The sloped design of new cars isn't just about aerodynamics. In a low-speed impact a pedestrian is lifted onto the hood. Forward leaning grills, such as on the Dodge Charger, some of the beefier Mustangs, and any number of other muscle cars or sedans, instea…

Those "forward leaning grills" you're crapping on are just flimsy plastic with a bunch of air behind them. If they strike a pedestrian at any speed they deform and crumple and whatnot and the pedestrian winds up on the hood. While not styled to lean forward like what Dodge does pretty much all the tall bulbous front ends that HN hates and are found on modern cars and crossovers are designed like this. A bunch of plas…

The context of my comments was someone asking about designing like the 1950's. I was trying to explain why we can't legally build those exact cars.

If you ignore that bit of the conversation, you're right that in a modern car you've got a good foot of material before you reach the first bit of metal, which is the hood, and the hood as some others have said is designed - today - to have a little give when a human encounters it. Something I actually have limited first hand experience in.

A lot of those muscle cars though, the hood of the vehicle extended all the way out past the bumper. So you wouldn't be able to build those exact designs. But maybe there's some compromise that incorporates your points with mine? The modern Mustang looks like an homage to the Mach era, but it's a shadow of that bad boy, and it only comes after decades of wandering in the proverbial desert.

The problem is always when you ask why generations of smart people didn't see the obvious answer, occasionally the answer is only visible to outsiders (curse of knowledge) but more often the answer simply doesn't work because of other, bigger concerns than aesthetics. For every time Beginner's Luck works out, there are tens or hundreds of cases of Chesterton's Fence.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#804

Post by jreese »

schuke wrote: post #295
jreese wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trucks don't have 18 gears for efficiency. They have 18 gears because low-revving diesel engines have small power bands; mix that with heavy loads, and it pretty much necessitates having a lot of short, closely-spaced gear ratios, so that maximum torque can be achieved consistently, no matter what speed you're at. Also, FWIW, they don't just pick between 18 gears with a single shifter. They have multiple inputs that…

Sounds like they could really use a CVT. ;)

I'm sure they would love one, but it's probably not that easy/cheap to find one that can handle that much torque with such heavy loads. The biggest/heaviest trucks just end up using electric/traction motors running from diesel generators, so they don't need a transmission at all.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#805

Post by perryizgr8 »

I learned driving on manual, and drove manual cars for many years. Changing gears, operating the clutch is second nature to me. I don't have to think about it, whether I'm driving on the highway, or in city traffic or on a steep hill.

Recently started driving a CVT, been about a couple months. I absolutely love the experience. It's so much more relaxed. The movement of the car is always smooth, I can hardly hear any changes in engine speed. I can accelerate from 20 km/h to 80 km/h and the RPM stays constant around 1100.

Hill driving is amazing, the car knows to shift down when going uphill. It knows to apply engine braking when going downhill.

City driving is effortless. Put it in drive, and it's literally just a matter of using the brake and accelerator. It even disengages the transmission completely when you come to a complete stop and stay there for a few seconds.

I have shift pedals on the steering, but I never felt the need to use them!

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#806

Post by cguess »

Slaminerag wrote: post #747
dinom wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do know that. But... Assuming you can even get to the antenna without special tools... you're just going to cut the antenna so short that the radio can't get a signal? On a hunch? What if the SOC in your vehicle has to download a rolling encryption key every week in order to activate?

There are plenty of parts of the US with really poor cell coverage. Even if everything's working perfectly, there's no guarantee that your car can update. Having a car die because it couldn't phone home is both a lawsuit waiting to happen and a potential PR nightmare.

Unfortunately some cars still do it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24754662

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#807

Post by cguess »

vanshg wrote: post #206
recursivedoubts wrote: post #7

I reiterate my compromise proposal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32397975 I will give up my manual transmission, if you will bring back pull-knobs, twist knobs and other tactile switches for the main controls of my vehicle, with the appropriate tactile feedback at set points so I can set them without looking. After thinking on it, I am going to raise my demands, however: you also need to produce cars that are…

That's exactly what Olympian Motors is doing. They're a YC company. It's beautifully styled imo and has only physical controls inside https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/olympian-motors https://olympianmotors.com/

A base price of $100,000?!

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#808

Post by CamperBob2 »

breakbread wrote: post #273
PheonixPharts wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's in your budget I highly recommend test driving the Porsche Macan. It has a screen but as far as I can tell it's not required for anything that doesn't implicitly require a screen (i.e. GPS). Overall the car is amazingly well designed. The tactile experience is there, you can feel your way around everything without moving your eyes from the road/immediate dash area. It still has an analog clock. I also feel li…

And a Mazda is the down-market alternative :)

Nothing wrong with a CX-5 whatsoever. It would be a very strong choice for anyone shopping in a similar market.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#809

Post by taylodl »

lisper wrote: post #797
taylodl wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even notice it. I would assume you're using a hydraulic clutch? I thought those were pretty much the standard (ha!) since 80's. Maybe I'm just getting a workout without realizing it? I do know whenever I drive my wife's car - which is an automatic because she also hates driving a manual transmission in traffic - my left foot nearly goes through the floorboard before it realizes there's no pedal there! :) I st…

This was 20-30 years ago. I drove two different manual transmissions in LA, a Volvo 240 and an Infiniti G20. I'm pretty sure the Volvo had a mechanical (non-hydraulic) clutch. Not sure about the G20.

Yeah, a mechanical clutch would be a BEAR!!! All my personal vehicles have always had a hydraulic clutch. They make it so simple your left foot can just do it without you much noticing it.

Re: The end of the manual transmission is near?

#810

Post by lisper »

taylodl wrote: post #809
lisper wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was 20-30 years ago. I drove two different manual transmissions in LA, a Volvo 240 and an Infiniti G20. I'm pretty sure the Volvo had a mechanical (non-hydraulic) clutch. Not sure about the G20.

Yeah, a mechanical clutch would be a BEAR!!! All my personal vehicles have always had a hydraulic clutch. They make it so simple your left foot can just do it without you much noticing it.

If it's not a mechanical clutch then it's not a real manual ;-)
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